A syllabus is like the Ten Commandments: delivered from on excessive as a rule for all times (or a minimum of for one semester). It appears chiseled in stone, but—at greatest—is imperfectly adopted.
Extra critically, a syllabus is a foundational doc for tutorial programs at any degree. They need to be written thoughtfully and punctiliously. The syllabus units the tone for the category, clarifies expectations, and solutions fundamental questions on course operations, permitting you to concentrate on instructing.
Right here, you will discover my very own Ten Commandments for writing and refining a syllabus. With these, you possibly can correctly information your college students from the second you lay down the legislation, by way of the semester’s wilderness, to the tip of time period’s Promised Land—with a minimal of grumbling.
Ten Commandments
- Depend on what others have executed
- Be strategic with the dimensions of your syllabus
- Clarify your self (briefly)
- Shepherd your college students
- Present your college students a pathway to success
- Give a syllabus examination
- Don’t use AI
- Reference the syllabus all through the semester
- Make clear classroom values
- Determine the place your loyalties lie
1. Depend on what others have executed
Take Jethro’s recommendation. Cease attempting to do all of it by your self.
If you’re a brand new teacher, begin by eager about your favourite professors and the way they did issues. Then, benefit from the knowledge of the school the place God has put you. Meet with the extra skilled. Discover out why they assemble their syllabi the best way they do. Assess what has labored for them, and what hasn’t. And think about using a syllabus template.
If you’re a extra skilled college member, meet with youthful college who’re attempting new issues. Decide their brains for brand spanking new concepts, and assist them to refine theirs!
2. Be strategic with the dimensions of your syllabus
Chisel two tablets. Syllabus minimalists are delicate to the truth that college students learn rather a lot. They don’t want a twenty-five-page syllabus in every of their 5 programs this semester! Your aim could be to condense content material down to simply two tablets pages on your graduate assistant to hold down the mountain.
Quick syllabi might be easy, standardized, and require little-to-no updating from 12 months to 12 months. They comprise simply the necessities, such because the course description, targets, and outcomes. Minimalists delete directions for assignments and course insurance policies (besides when the establishment or division requires it to be included). They may even eradicate the course schedule!
However even in case you are a minimalist, make sure to embody your contact data, in addition to content material that orients the coed to the philosophy of the course. Additionally, use the course LMS website to offer the weather you’ve neglected of the syllabus—reminiscent of, importantly, the course schedule—so college students can simply discover and observe it.
Or write 5 books. Syllabus maximalists imagine in placing all the required data in a single place. They’re most likely additionally utilizing the syllabus to deal with a lack of expertise or readability that has burned them up to now.
The benefit of a protracted syllabus is that it’s a one-stop-shop for course data. Ideally, college students can discover a solution to almost any query they could have about course operations—if solely they may look!
So, it’s important for syllabus maximalists to benefit from clear, engaging, easy-to-follow formatting. Contemplate:
- textual content (e.g., dimension, font, shade, indentation, and so forth.)
- content material (e.g., clear headings and sub-headings)
- visible aids (e.g., bullets, tables)
Use a constant, organized format in order that college students can simply discover the knowledge they want. Be sure that a very powerful data is highlighted at as excessive a degree within the headings as potential. Don’t bury key factors within the effective print.
3. Clarify your self (briefly)
Transcend laying down the legislation. Contemplate together with explanations of the next:
- Why you selected these textbooks
- What the assignments are supposed to perform (e.g., why have them memorize a creed; why studying vocab is necessary to the course targets; and so forth.)
- Why assignments are structured the best way they’re
- Who the assumed viewers for the project is (e.g., students, pastors, church members, most people)
- How assignments are associated to future ministries college students might need
- Why you assemble checks the best way you do (e.g., what T/F, multiple-choice, and essay questions are supposed to show)
- How your course connects with a level, division, and the tutorial mission of the establishment
4. Shepherd your college students
Demolish the golden calves. Clarify why grades matter—and the way they don’t!
Exhort college students to supply God their greatest. But remind them that their worth and identification is secured by Christ, not by their grades.
One smart professor used to encourage his college students, “For a few of you, not making an A is a sin. For others, making an A can be a sin!” College students have to study to steadiness their obligations properly. Excellence must be valued with out changing into an idol.
Excellence must be valued with out changing into an idol.
Remind college students that whereas they’re your cause for being there, they shouldn’t be their personal cause for being there. The aim of their schooling just isn’t merely a grade, a level, higher data, and even preparation for a profession. College students are there for each individual God is looking them to serve sooner or later, and in the end they’re there for God’s glory.
5. Present your college students a pathway to success
Don’t allow them to wander aimlessly by way of a wilderness. Even with a pillar of cloud by day and fireplace by evening, college students can wander aimlessly. Like Israelites trapped between Pharaoh’s chariots and the Pink Sea, many college students will finally discover themselves caught between their poor planning and a course deadline.
Listed below are some ideas for methods to treatment this:
i. Make plain the course schedule
No matter the place you present it (course LMS or within the syllabus), embody day-to-day data on studying, lectures, assignments, and exams. Moreover, spotlight due dates and examination dates in order that college students will probably be reminded to look forward and see what’s coming.
ii. Break up giant assignments (e.g., analysis papers, exegetical research, or shows)
Divide them into elements, then use these steps to stroll college students although a greatest practices analysis and writing course of. Assist them start their work early sufficient and do their work effectively sufficient to realize the standard you count on. This will probably be particularly useful in settings the place many college students haven’t been taught methods to write analysis papers (just like the undergraduate degree, or seminary contexts which don’t assume undergraduate preparation).
iii. Schedule assignments fastidiously
Contemplate these 4 key standards:
- Preserve the calendar helpful. Bear in mind holidays, breaks, and different occasions on the scholars’ calendar—and yours!
- Keep away from congestion. Unfold issues out in order that college students aren’t overwhelmed with a number of objects which are due across the identical time. This may even aid you (or your TAs) keep away from being overwhelmed with objects to grade!
- Go away house to include suggestions. Take into consideration how shortly you possibly can present high quality suggestions, and make sure to give college students sufficient time to include suggestions into future assignments.
- Join assignments with course content material. The place potential, schedule assignments to correlate with studying and lecture subjects. Assignments would possibly construct on classroom time. They may additionally put together college students for in-class studying.
6. Give a syllabus examination
Present accountability. For undergraduates, notably freshman-level courses, think about together with an auto-graded “syllabus examination” on the course LMS website to make sure they study key data within the syllabus.
Make the examination “open syllabus,” and require college students to retake it till they earn a 100%. This undercuts later claims that “I didn’t know that requirement, rule, or coverage!” (A syllabus examination additionally provides college students a “free” A+ grade as they acclimate to your extra rigorous course necessities.)
7. Don’t use AI
Watch out for false prophets. Don’t use AI to jot down your syllabus, together with (satirically) your individual anti-AI coverage.
False prophets are available in many varieties, some with the pretense of righteousness. One such prophet assigned college students to clarify why utilizing AI in writing corrupts important pondering. A pupil put the directions by way of an AI detection website—and located that the teacher had used AI to create the project!
No matter their AI coverage, it’s folly for college to place burdens on college students that they’re unwilling to bear themselves. Promise your college students that in the event that they gained’t use AI in your class, you gained’t use AI to grade their papers or write their advice letters!
8. Reference the syllabus all through the semester
Converse of it while you go in and while you exit. Don’t let the syllabus change into a scroll misplaced within the temple of studying. Discuss with the syllabus all through the semester.
Remind college students of the syllabus’s directions for assignments, explanations of examination constructions, grading rubrics, and project targets. At every new course phase, evaluation the syllabus to preview and summarize what’s going to occur within the part and why.
9. Make clear classroom values
Meditate on it day and evening. The syllabus provides a beautiful alternative to clarify the values which you as an teacher are dedicated to mannequin. Solid the imaginative and prescient for the tutorial neighborhood that you simply hope to kind. Emphasize that the classroom tradition is one thing that we create collectively.
A colleague of mine provides this instance of classroom values.
- We will probably be dedicated to changing into Nice Fee leaders
- We will probably be involved in regards to the Non secular Vitality of every participant
- We are going to keep Theological Integrity as we examine numerous sorts of literature
- We are going to emphasize the Neighborhood of Studying
- We are going to follow Transformative Studying
- We are going to make the most of a Dialogical Method
10. Determine the place your loyalties lie
Hear, O college students! All instructors method the courses they educate with convictions that form your method to your self-discipline in addition to that course. These could also be theological, philosophical, methodological, or sensible. Determine these commitments on your college students.
If you’re at a confessional or denominational establishment, your college’s confessional doc will surely seem right here. You might also find your self inside a convention that distinguishes you from others. Point out the place you embrace a specific college of thought related to the course. Determine key methodological commitments (e.g., surveying the Previous Testomony within the order of the Hebrew fairly than the LXX/English), and provides a quick clarification concerning why you employ that method.
But keep away from making this part of the syllabus a box-checking train or a defensive maneuver. Acknowledge that there will probably be totally different views within the class. Affirm that you’ll maintain your views deeply however generously. This type of transparency will talk to college students that they’re free to reveal their very own views throughout the class. Guarantee them that they won’t be ridiculed or demeaned for doing so.
A Deuterocanonical command
Permit me to supply one bonus command: Let the Phrase be very close to you; that’s, combine Logos into your course.
A few years in the past, the Faculty of Christian Research at Charleston Southern College adopted Logos Inclusive Entry. This program ensures that each pupil in a Christian research course receives not solely their textbooks, but additionally a supplemental biblical research library by way of Logos. Moreover, it gives them with Logos’s wealthy suite of highly effective analysis instruments. The place textbook leases take books again on the finish of every semester, Logos gives a bundle that belongs to college students for the rest of their educational research—and for the remainder of their lives and ministries after commencement.
Integrating Logos into my programs has allowed me to:
- Embed hyperlinks to all my Logos-based readings in my course LMS website
- Create sharable notebooks in Logos to offer college students my commentary on assigned textual content, embody studying prompts and questions, and mark the place readings finish
- Construct assignments that use Logos instruments to help my course targets
I even educate college students methods to save their course notes as a Logos Private E book. In superior programs, I current everybody’s analysis papers to the entire class as a Logos Private E book. Creating Logos Private Books ensures that what I’ve taught my college students will probably be accessible to them all through their ministries.
Conclusion
A brand new semester units earlier than college students a alternative: If not of life or demise (Deut 30:15), a minimum of of satisfaction or frustration. College students stand at a fork within the highway between data and ignorance, knowledge and folly.
A well-written syllabus is an invite to enter a land flowing with the milk of information and the honey of knowledge.
Ben Phillips’s really useful sources for instructors
- Small Instructing: On a regular basis Classes from the Science of Studying by James M. Lang
- What the Finest Faculty Academics Do by Kevin Bain
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